Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings

neuburger.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 83 posts

Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings

#21

Post by 0_____0 »

belorn wrote: post #16

Here in Sweden, the use of license plate scanners has become the norm for basically all parking houses, bridge tolls and road tolls. Even if you don't install the app or become a "member" of whatever system they are using, the license plate scanners is still used to detect when you enter or leave, and in some cases they automatically look up your home address to send you the bill with zero interaction with the driver…

Looking for context here: how do Swedes view their government? Do they feel represented by, it, trust their governments etc.?

My perception as a USian in a coastal, progressive state, is that trust in government is quite low. Municipal and county governments do OK, but federal and to some degree state governments seems to have priorities that are wildly divergent from our own.

Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings

#22

Post by maxeda »

belorn wrote: post #16

Here in Sweden, the use of license plate scanners has become the norm for basically all parking houses, bridge tolls and road tolls. Even if you don't install the app or become a "member" of whatever system they are using, the license plate scanners is still used to detect when you enter or leave, and in some cases they automatically look up your home address to send you the bill with zero interaction with the driver…

Unlike toll roads and parking lot entrances it seems like these cameras are being installed for the sole purpose of surveillance and tracking peoples movements.

Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings

#23

Post by tptacek »

0_____0 wrote: post #21
belorn wrote: post #16

Here in Sweden, the use of license plate scanners has become the norm for basically all parking houses, bridge tolls and road tolls. Even if you don't install the app or become a "member" of whatever system they are using, the license plate scanners is still used to detect when you enter or leave, and in some cases they automatically look up your home address to send you the bill with zero interaction with the driver…

Looking for context here: how do Swedes view their government? Do they feel represented by, it, trust their governments etc.? My perception as a USian in a coastal, progressive state, is that trust in government is quite low. Municipal and county governments do OK, but federal and to some degree state governments seems to have priorities that are wildly divergent from our own.

I'm in Chicagoland (in Oak Park, directly adjacent to the west side of Chicago) and it literally depends on which suburb you're in. Oak Park is hostile to ALPRs. Berwyn, our neighbor to the south, and River Forest, to the west, are carpeted with them. They're there because people want them.

Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings

#24

Post by tptacek »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #20
mc32 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or as Thomas stated elsewhere in this thread, they can follow Illinois and just exempt ALPRs from FOIA reach. ALPR FOIAs have the potential problem of abuse by stalkers and others wanting to track someone (imagine “Hollywood” personæs.) It’d be a bad precedent to follow, but they could. I wonder what Tiburon will be doing. They’ve had ALPRs since forever as they only have one road in and one road out, so it’s easy fo…

> ALPR FOIAs have the potential problem of abuse by stalkers and others wanting to track someone (imagine “Hollywood” personæs.) Not potential problems, actual existing problems: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/she-got-abortion-so-te...

Worth being specific here: the problem this page is discussing isn't ALPRs per se, but automatic ALPR data sharing.

Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings

#25

Post by LadyCailin »

0_____0 wrote: post #21
belorn wrote: post #16

Here in Sweden, the use of license plate scanners has become the norm for basically all parking houses, bridge tolls and road tolls. Even if you don't install the app or become a "member" of whatever system they are using, the license plate scanners is still used to detect when you enter or leave, and in some cases they automatically look up your home address to send you the bill with zero interaction with the driver…

Looking for context here: how do Swedes view their government? Do they feel represented by, it, trust their governments etc.? My perception as a USian in a coastal, progressive state, is that trust in government is quite low. Municipal and county governments do OK, but federal and to some degree state governments seems to have priorities that are wildly divergent from our own.

I can’t speak to Swedes, but as an American Norwegian, I can say that the level of trust in Scandinavian is WAY higher than in the US. It’s not utopia, of course, (see Chat Control, for instance) but you really can trust the government here to take care of things when it goes off the rails for whatever reason.

Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings

#26

Post by floatrock »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #7
dedup-com wrote: post #5

It must be said that "cities", as used in this piece, is a rather generous term. Sedro-Woolley has 13K residents. Stanwood has 9K. They probably don't have enough people on payroll to handle FOA requests, hence "panic".

Are they not allowed to charge a service fee?

Service fees is the counter-tactic here.

If it takes the city clerk multiple hours to assemble and distribute the video clips and time gets billed to $1k/request because it's being done in the most inefficient, asinine way, well, how many FOIA requests really have $1k of urgency behind them?

I don't know enough about municipal billing to know how defensible that is, but it's definitely one of the escalation paths here.

Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings

#27

Post by tptacek »

floatrock wrote: post #26
mixmastamyk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they not allowed to charge a service fee?

Service fees is the counter-tactic here. If it takes the city clerk multiple hours to assemble and distribute the video clips and time gets billed to $1k/request because it's being done in the most inefficient, asinine way, well, how many FOIA requests really have $1k of urgency behind them? I don't know enough about municipal billing to know how defensible that is, but it's definitely one of the escalation paths her…

Not very defensible. Wherever you are, this is probably fairly settled law. In Illinois, playing games with fees for non-commercial requests is likely to land you in a suit with fee recovery for the plaintiff and thus good legal representation on contingency.

Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings

#28

Post by some_random »

qchris wrote: post #18
dedup-com wrote: post #5

It must be said that "cities", as used in this piece, is a rather generous term. Sedro-Woolley has 13K residents. Stanwood has 9K. They probably don't have enough people on payroll to handle FOA requests, hence "panic".

You know, in hockey there's sometimes a saying that "if you're too small to carry your gear bag, you're too small to play hockey." Feels like there might be some kind of moral lesson there for this situation.

Hockey is a game, governing is not.

Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings

#29

Post by [deleted] »

qchris wrote: post #18
dedup-com wrote: post #5

It must be said that "cities", as used in this piece, is a rather generous term. Sedro-Woolley has 13K residents. Stanwood has 9K. They probably don't have enough people on payroll to handle FOA requests, hence "panic".

You know, in hockey there's sometimes a saying that "if you're too small to carry your gear bag, you're too small to play hockey." Feels like there might be some kind of moral lesson there for this situation.

[deleted]

Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings

#30

Post by th0ma5 »

dedup-com wrote: post #5

It must be said that "cities", as used in this piece, is a rather generous term. Sedro-Woolley has 13K residents. Stanwood has 9K. They probably don't have enough people on payroll to handle FOA requests, hence "panic".

FOA requests are a part of the total cost of ownership of these products. At some point a vendor, the state, a consultancy was negligent in this fact, and we should not entertain ideas of minimizing the issues I agree. Cities is the correct term, below that size are villages and hamlets and if they are incorporated they are a city.
Post reply on HN